Novel Preview: "Spirits of the Charles"

Hey there, Ramblers! It's a super-rare DOUBLE OCTOBER UPDATE!

This post is for showing off the intro to my NEW urban -fantasy pulp novel, "Spirits of the Charles," which--if everything goes right, fingers crossed!--should be available in early 2018 on Amazon Kindle! Hope you enjoy, and feel free to repost if you like what you see so far! There's 200 more pages where this came from, and of course, any commentary / criticism is welcome.

Follow me at @gaslightrambler on Twitter , for future updates on the status of the novel!

  

Prelude

            In 1867, Florence Nightingale built the first emotional distillers, hoping to “drain” excess feelings from shattered veterans of the Crimean War.
 
            It didn’t work.
 
            But Florence and her assistants had stumbled on something unnatural: the process while useless to the veterans and dangerous to the soul, produced a new substance unknown to mankind—and to the laws of physics. It was an impossible, non-Newtonian liquid, beautiful and strange. It was the essence of human feeling, condensed into physical form. It was revolutionary.
 
            It was also easy to make, and highly addictive.
 
            The secret to its production spread across Europe, and into America. Certain runes from an old Roman cult circulated in the blackmarket. Distilleries churned to life, condensing ‘Draughts’ in great numbers. By the turn of the century, condensed emotions had replaced alcohol as the United States’ drug of choice, and new, exotic varieties proliferated everywhere.
 
            The Great War arrived, slaughtered a generation, and went. Soldiers quaffed from flasks of Rage during Verdun; the survivors found Joy more to their liking, and drowned themselves in it. New Year’s Eve 1918, was toasted with champagne flutes of Hope and Nostalgia, mixed with bubbling champagne.
 
            By this time, the mutations caused by Draughts were well-known—but America drank them anyway. Breweries claimed these effects were temporary. The fact that the brewers had no idea what they were selling, or even how it worked, didn’t stop people from buying. New Draught companies were cropping up every day, breeding fear and panic in small communities worried about temperance. It was as if the Devil himself had arrived in person to corrupt them. Not only were young people dancing to the blues and smoking, now they were literally changing, warping into living Myths. Sometimes, they didn’t change back.
 
            The fear gathered momentum. Marches were held, distillers dragged into the streets and beaten. In response to this unstable market, the Draughts grew more powerful, more unpredictable. Myths were now a frequent sight. Wives no longer recognized husbands; preachers rejected their flocks. People drunk on Lust grew horns, or indulged in Love and became smothering cherubs, complete with wings. It was a theological crisis. Something needed to be done, before the country tore itself to pieces. The debate rose through ranks of power, and in the face of the strangeness devouring their nation, Congress finally took action.
 
            In 1919, the Volstead Act passed, making the selling of Draughts illegal. Prohibition was now the law, but it wasn’t enough.
 
            The party of mankind’s demise had just begun.





June 29th, 1926
 

            It had been a morning just like this, Rose Sweetwater thought, the day they’d burned her town to the ground.

            The morning dew rose off the fields in a slow, hazy mist. The chill of pre-dawn was full of sleepy birdsong, and the chitter of insects. The damp quiet hung close around her, numbing her nose. Today she’d risen full of fading dreams and scraps of nightmare; bad memories, Southern memories. Luckily, she had a fresh gig to distract her. She’d shined her shoes and donned her mechanic’s cap, rising earlier than the rest of Boston to do the city’s dirty work. The work better people, respectable people, left to people like her.

            Mood-legging work.

            At least it was predictable… usually. Cash changed hands, booze rattled in hidden compartments and glowed with infused emotional essence. Today was just a trade-off like any other—a shivering, cold dawn, and a quiet back-roads deal with scumbags and criminals. At least it’s a paycheck.

            Standing on a misty country road, she checked the safety on her Mauser for the hundredth time. She’d never fired it, and hoped she’d never have to. Contrary to what mosts folks thought, Draught-running wasn’t usually a violent business—unless somebody screwed up.

The safety was still on. Slipping of the stubby gun back into her overalls, she bounced on her heels, boyish frame too energetic for all this standing and waiting. She and Gus Henderson were standing on the edge of dense, overgrown woods and fields, listening for the sound of their supplier.

“They’re late,” she said, glancing at Gus. His craggy, sideburned face was bent over a few baseball cards, assessing their value. He was a big half-Myth with burly shoulders, ugly as sin but mostly loyal. As long as someone else wasn’t paying better, today.

            “They’re always late,” he said, his voice a gentle growl.

            “Today’s a bad day for that.”

            “Every day’s a bad day in this business. Just stay loose.” He shuffled the cards, and tucked them in his shirt pocket. A racketeer and shyster, he would probably sell them at inflated prices later—the Greed he drank daily made him good at such schemes. It also made him hideous, but she could deal with that.

            In silence, they both glanced at the milk truck behind them. The glass jugs stood empty, coated in white paint. They’d rented the truck from Watertown Dairy, for camouflage, but it was a shoddy disguise. Liquid Grief was purple, not white, and once they filled the bottles anyone who checked would be able to see through the ruse.

            She brushed a coil of hair out of her eyes, watching the quiet country road ahead. Gus was lighting another cigar, despite the fact it had to be barely five in the morning, and the click of his cigar-cutter was deafening in the quiet.

            She wrinkled her nose at the fungal smoke. “Those things will kill you, Gus. You ought to quit.”

            His pebbly, distorted face bunched into folds as he smiled, and razor teeth glimmered in his mouth. “Faster than stomach cancer? Good.” He drew in a heavy breath and exhaled, clouding the verdant back-road with grayish blue smog. “It’s my guts, not my lungs I’m concerned for. Let the stogies have ‘em.”

            She shrugged.

            They were a strange a pair: a lithe black girl wearing bricklayer’s coveralls, and a man who looked like a cross between a gator and a rugby player. It was a wonder they’d even landed this gig, looking like they did, but their reputation had been enough to edge out the competition. Rose was the best getaway driver in Massachusetts, and Gus refused to do jobs without her—and he was the biggest bundle of muscle money could buy, south of Concord. So here they were.

            She stuck a toothpick between her front teeth. Her left pocket was full of them, and in the right one she had mint leaves. Rose was very serious about hygiene. “Damn Fomeroys are probably sleeping off a drunk.”

            “They’ll come.” Gus spat into a ditch, the saliva sizzling on impact. “Maybe not sober, but they’ll come.”

             “Sounds like you’re right.” The rattle of a car engine boomed through the birch trees, coming closer. She smelled the exhaust before she saw their truck: a thick, vile stench, almost as bad as the Fomeroys themselves.

            This tract of woods was not well-settled. The ground was full of stones, bad for farming. A long time ago, a bunch of moonshiners had settled here, populating the dense pines of western Massachusetts. This family had somehow gotten ahold of an emotional distiller—nobody knew how they’d done it. Overnight they’d become the biggest supplier of knockoff Draughts in the state. Those who couldn’t afford to smuggle from New Hampshire or past the Coast Guard had to go through the Fomeroy clan, and it wasn’t an easy process. The Fomerys had gone a little… funny, living out here and brewing Draughts.

            The supplier’ rickety pickup swerved up, its wooden slat-bed shedding old chicken feathers all over the road. She saw Gus reach for his Winchester, in the back of the milk truck—the pickup was coming on fast, too fast. She stood firm, though, and the squeal of corroded brakes sounded as the Fomeroys stopped just inches away. The driver’s door swung open.

            “You’re late,” she said.

            Dick Fomeroy, the eldest, hopped down from the cab with an unsteady wobble. He was a thick-set man, with long arms and beetle-brows, a ragged derby hat clinging to his head. His eyes wandered, watery and distracted. He stumbled to the back of the truck and began unloading a cargo of covered buckets.

            “We can be as late as we like,” Edgar Fomeroy, the younger, clambered out the passenger side. He was a gangly youth with an excess of pimples—and an excess of temper. “We gots a monopoly.”

            “Yeah? Good for you. Now give us the merchandise.”

            His lip curled. “Bossy. Brownie like you oughta to know better.” His shirt and overalls bulged and shifted—full of mutations, the result of mixing Draughts with shoddy equipment, and no expertise. Skin contact wasn’t usually enough to Mythify someone, but the Fomeroys were so sloppy they’d turned themselves into freaks just brewing their product.

            “You oughta do your job,” growled Gus, moving up to stand by Rose. He towered over both of them, six feet and change of ex-boxer. “Or do you need some reminders?”

            “Alright, alright. Keep your shirt on.” Edgar joined his brother, pulling a hand-beaten copper funnel from the cab. They took the milk bottles Gus offered, and set them up in a line.  “Damn big-city palooka.”

            They backed off as the brothers did their work, wrapping kerchiefs over their mouths.

            “Thanks,” said Rose. “I hate working with these two.” The brothers had begun pouring streams of Grief down the funnel and into the counterfeit milk bottles. “I don’t know which is worse-their attitude, or the smell.”

            “Definitely the smell.” Gus stayed close to the Winchester, watching the moonshiners with reptilian eyes. “Maybe it’s the Greed talking, but do our boys seem weirder than usual today?”

            “Yeah. That takes doing.” The Fomeroys were muttering under their breath to each other, and the stench of the Grief—like a mix of licorice and seawater—washed over them. The hairs on Rose’s neck began to rise. She’d had that feeling right before the riots in Florida: that creeping, crawling sensation that something was wrong. It seemed to come from everywhere, triggered by a change in the wind, a distant sound… something on the edge of her perception. A far-off rumble reached her, through the placid trees.

“Someone’s coming.”

            “I hear ‘em.” Gus held his rifle in the crook of his arm, shouting at the Fomeroys. “You two! Hurry it up!”

            “Can’t rush this,” said Dick, muffled under his handkerchief. “It’s a delicate art.”

            “He’s right,” Eddie said. “Spill this stuff, and your payment disappears. Betcha Mr. Wallace won’t be pleased with that.”

            Rose winced at the mention of her employer. Frank Wallace was a brutal Irish thug, whose brothers had promised her and Gus solid payment for land-shipped Draughts.. The Wallaces were con men and murderers… but they paid.

            She had no love for Frank or the “boys,” but she needed this money--badly. And so did Gus. “Screw the payment. Hurry this up, or we’ll give you a reason to hurry.”
            The Fomeroys looked at her… and kept pouring at the same speed. They knew she was no bruiser, and were calling her blugg. But she could put on a mean poker-face, and the gun looked serious enough. She pulled the Mauser, The brothers glanced at her pistol, nodded… and kept on pouring at the same snail’s pace.
            Gus growled deep in his throat. “Engine’s getting closer.”

            “Engines, plural. There’s more than one.” Rose covered her mouth and nose; the fumes from the Grief were making her sleepy. Depressed. “Wait a second. That stuff is gray!”

            “So?” Ed said, defensive. But his eyes shifted to Jack for a moment, and back.

            “Grief is purple, you backwoods sunsabitches,” said Henderson. “That stuff’s Misery, not Grief! What are you trying to pull?”

            “Our Grief is always gray,” said Ed. “It’s just how the batch comes out!” But he stopped pouring, and so had Dick. They seemed frozen, lacking even the creativity for fresh lies.

            “It’s a play,” said Rose. The pieces snapped into place so quickly she felt stupid for not seeing it. “Gus, they’re selling to someone else. Someone paid them to meet us here—knock off the competition.” Her throat went dry as the roar of the approaching cars drowned out her voice. “This is an ambush.”

            The Fomeroys didn’t bother with deception, instead bolting for their truck. Rose could see Edgar tugging a pistol from his pocket as he went. Her partner raised his rifle, and put a round through the fender of their car. The booming crack of the gun hammered her, and she bolted for the milk truck.

            Gus was furious. “Get back here! Lying shit-heads!”

            “Gus, leave ‘em! We gotta scoot!” She cranked the starter handle on the front of their truck—too quickly. It leapt from her fingers, swinging around and bashing her hand. Her knuckles went numb and she bit back profanity.

            “Two-timing finks!” Gus followed her as Ed steadied his corroded revolver on the pickup’s steering wheel, firing wild. The gunshots rattled her, threatened to stun her to inaction; instead, she grabbed the starter and shoved it again. Every second of delay put them closer to death—the Fomeroys couldn’t shoot for shit, but whoever was coming down that road probably could.

            At last the old milk truck stuttered to life; she leapt behind the wheel as a bullet whizzed through the canopy, leaving behind a shaft of dawn-light. “Got it! Let’s go!”

            “I needed that cash!” But he jumped in the passenger side as the Fomeroys went into reverse and pulled away, still firing.

            “Now’s not the time!” She jerked the truck to forward-gear just as two big Ford cars came roaring down the road—one from each direction. It was a smart move: the milk truck was positioned at a bend in the road. There would be no cross-fire. 

            The incoming cars swerved and stopped, forming a blockade. Men piled out—men in thick polo coats, faces grim. From beneath their coats they produced an assortment of firearms. She saw Colt pistols, Springfields, and even a massive Browning chopper, its drum pregnant with murder. Fear twisted her insides as they drove towards one of the firing squads; the eyes of these men were steel. They had done this many times.

They were eighty feet out from the guns on the long, dusty road. Rose pressed the gas.

            “Those are Family cars!” Gus chambered new rounds into the Winchester, slapping the barrel on a side mirror and squinting down the iron sights. “We hit the Family, we’re a target—”

            Sixty feet. “We’re already a target! Shoot, goddammit!”

            Gus levelled his rifle, and there was a fruitless clicking sound. “It’s jammed! Cover me!”

            Thirty feet.

            Rose leaned out the window, pistol ready, and froze. The blank faces ahead of her were fearless and hateful, but she’d seen what bullets did to people. Back in Florida, she’d seen bodies turned chunks, human lives reduced to meat. The memories were visceral and stamped on her mind so firmly for a moment it was all she could see. Then reality snapped back to her. She shoved her weapon at Gus. “Use mine—I’ve got the wheel!”

            Gus took the gun, leaned out the passenger side and started shooting. He was a former army grunt, and unlike her, he had no trouble unleashing lethal force. The men stood firm, even as windshields exploded and one of them went down hard, a bullet leaving a hole in his long coat. Rose felt sick, but there was no time to react—she had to swerve to avoid return-fire, the noise of it washing away everything but her terror.

            She wasn’t sure if God was on her side, but somebody must have been watching, because her final swerve took them around the Family, riding two wheels and sending assassins diving for cover. The wheels slammed down, engine whining—and then they were clear.

She hunkered low and winced as Browning rounds peppered the truck, shattering milk-bottles and tearing through the chassis. She heard Henderson roar with pain, and blood spattered the dashboard.

            Oh dear Jesus—But they were rounding the bend now. The road was uneven and their truck jolted and rattled, threatening to pitch over, but they’d survived. She allowed herself to breathe again, trying to follow the road, searching for twists and turns to throw off pursuers. “Gus, you… you shot somebody.”

“We’re outlaws, Rose. Stuff like this happens.” He was clutching his shoulder; she couldn’t see how bad it was, and was too panicked to ask.

She swallowed, and sent up a quick prayer for the man’s soul. Somehow, she didn’t think he’d make it to heaven. “Think they’ll chase us?”

            “Don’t think so. They already took a risk, shooting big irons off… Christ, that hurts.”

She looked over, horrified, to see his entire left shoulder was a mass of red. Blood soaked his shirt, seeping through his fingers.

            “Gus! Are you—”

            “I’m fine. Just need a shot of the dog’s whiskers.” He reached into the glove compartment and fumbled through trucking permits and fake identities. She heard him wheeze with agony; scaly or not, a bullet to the shoulder still hurt him. “Ah, there it is.” He plucked a brown bottle of Greed from under the papers, its contents yellow and viscous.

            Despite her panic, she was disgusted. “Gus. You promised you wouldn’t drink that stuff on the job.”

            “Bitch me out when I’m done bleeding, okay?” He unscrewed the cap and chugged the last of it, tossing it out the window. “Ah … That’s the good shit.”

            She watched as his greasy hair sprouted golden spines, fingers extending. His face grew longer, shrewder, and more reptilian. It made her stomach turn, but it had the desired effect: his new mutations slowed the bleeding, bronze scales growing over his wound. He tore off a sleeve from his shirt, tying it over his shoulder. “See?” He belched. “All better.”

            Rose gripped the wheel in frustrated silence. She relied on him to get them through scrapes like this one, but it was hard to trust a man who was half-drunk all the time. And his looks didn’t make him easier to work with: his scales and claws had been caused by a batch of bad Greed years ago, and every drop of the stuff he took seemed to make it worse. Most times he was tolerable, if sullen, but the Draughts blurred his judgment even while they kept him alive. Then he began to talk, voice a little deeper and scratchier than before. She knew what it would be about, before he opened his mouth: he always returned to his favorite subject, after a drink. Money.

            “You ever think about hitting Providence?”

            She shrugged. “We just got shot at. I’m not thinking about anything.”

            He ignored her. “We should hit Providence sometime. I hear they got a king’s ransom coming in down there. We’d be made with a slice of that… just made.” His voice was silky with the rush of Greed.

            She sighed. “Yeah. I’ve thought about it. I’ve also thought about staying alive.” She sighed. “Get your blood off the dashboard. I don’t want to end up in the slammer when a cop sees your guts all over the place.”

           “Sure. Say, you got a dollar? I could really use a dollar."

           Still shaking, Rose rolled her eyes and thanked God for letting them live. Then she gave him a dollar.

            He dabbed at his own fresh blood with it, then held it up to the light. The sun shone through it, stripes of light dancing over Washington’s blood-soaked face. “There he is. The big cheese.”

           “You owe me a buck.”

           “Add it to my tab, honey.”

           “Call me that again, and I’ll put another hole in you. Maybe two.”

            He pocketed the money. Her jibes seemed to sober him up; he was a rascal, but he still had priorities. “Alright, alright. Keep your bloomers on… and get us back into town. We need to tell Wallace about our little problem, back there.”

      Their little bootleg truck rolled east.

The Cherry Blossoms of Regulon V

               Zob Kane stood above the greatest floral spectacle in the galaxy: myriads of grottos and rosy shadows, elegant trunks with spines extended and quivering in the alien sunset. “Ah, Regulon V is so sublime, in its summer cycle. Can’t you feel the sublimity?” He sighed: the long, peaceful sigh of the Artist-In-His-Element. “I could paint here forever.”

               Perhaps, thought Will. But nothing good.

               They set up their tripods, planting the legs deep in the nitrous-rich earth. Sublime… What did this idiot know about sublime? They’d eaten burgers for breakfast, for Chrissake. But Will didn’t go for mockery—it wasn’t like his friend would’ve listened.

 “Very sublime,” he said.

               “They’re poisonous, when they come down. The blossoms. Did I tell you?”

                “I was the one who told you.”

               “Right, right. Just like you told me about that girl, back home. Good call there. She was fantastic.” His friend fumbled for the z-axis paints, failing: the mittens of his space-suit were soon stained in a clumsy rainbow. There were newer models, but Zob had insisted on “authentic” suits. He tried to preen his Dali mustache, couldn’t do it because of the bubble helmet, and settled for a raconteur pose. “Look at those blossoms, how rugose! That quintessential sunset! I think I’ll start in lime-pink. Lime-pink is so trendy.”

               “You do whatever feels right, man.” Will moved his easel several steps back; he didn’t want to get in the way of genius, after all.

               “I’m so glad we came. My Muse is with me, Will. She’s embracing me.”

               I brought you here. It was my money, my life. Given for you.

               Will painted a Regulan flatworm. He wasn’t sure why; it just seemed to fit the empty space, its features sharp and vicious. The colors came to life, wriggled free of the canvas, and started floating towards Zob. The pincers snapped, the stinger flashed and throbbed with menace.

Will was quite far along, in Z-axis painting—farther, he suspected, than anyone had ever gone. Without a better word for it, he supposed he was a god. It brought no joy; the girl had been the last in a series of insults that stretched for years. His hands trembled.

Regulan flatworms were ethereal; they wriggled right through the molecules of your clothes and skin, to suck your organs empty. It was a horrific way to die.

                Zob, the peacock, stayed oblivious. “They’ll hang this one in the gallery, just like my thesis. I can sense it.”

               Liar. That work was mine.

              The theft had been subtle: “a little help” on the final graduate assignment had required more and more work, until it was unparalleled. Now, Will’s piece hung in the alumni hall at Berkelee, a plaque naming it Bee’s Insides in Radical-Yellow… by Zob Kane. 

            The flatworm was very close.

You do whatever feels right, man. Was this the act of a just god? 

A loving god?

Will’s hands grew still. He painted a gentle breeze of lavender-indigo: it rose from the canvas, drifted and blew the flatworm away. Its delicate body tumbled over the leaves.

               “The petals! Oh, the petals!” Zob was painting, Will saw: really painting. Not well, but still. The pigments were a pale copy of the valley, but the first layer had promise; the second might well contain real technique. The third… Well, by the finish, his friend might have something. His very first non-plagiarism. “Look at those colors. I see what the religious types are about, now. God is great, and all that shit!”

               Will smiled. “Yes. He truly is.”

               Zob turned to him, and his cheeks were shining the color of the toxic blossoms. “What would you know? You haven’t even started yet.”

The Retcon

                “I used to be a hero.” I cleared my throat. “Well, a sidekick, technically. That’s the first step towards recovery, right? Admitting you had a problem.” There were quiet chuckles from the group around me, but the laughter didn’t reach their eyes. Under the ceiling bulb, in our circle of folding chairs, we looked like a bunch of monks in bright, trendy clothing. “You guys knew my mentor—Cellular Man. Re-shaped his own cells to shapeshift, fight crime, the whole routine.” I stared through my fingers at the floor. “Guess he thought having a ‘sidekick of color’ would pad out his resume, or something. Whatever his reasons, he hired me, and we made a good team. With my plant powers and his cell control, we changed the world—for the better.” I sighed. “He called me ‘Verdant Lass,’ and it stuck. Worst goddamned sidekick name in the…” I paused. “Sorry.”

                “Don’t apologize,” said the guy across from me, Toby Wires—aka Wire-Lad. Used to be, he could control metal cables. Why just metal cables? We never found out. Of course, now all he controlled were lattes, as a barista. “We’re not an ‘example’ anymore, Shawna. You don’t have to worry about the code of morals—you can speak freely.”

                “Right you are, fucker!” More laughter, and this time I saw some genuine smiles. “Damn, it feels good to curse. One good thing about the Rewrite, we finally get to act like people.”

                “Represent!” said Gamma Gal, pumping a fist.

                Toby put out a hand. “Okay, come on. Let the girl finish.”

                “Anyway, I’m no different than you guys. I still miss my old life. After…” I swallowed. The cement floor seemed to spin underneath me, as I tried to reconcile reality with who I used to be. The thing I used to care about. “After the Rewrite, when we ended up here, I went to see Cellular Man. A lot of heroes, they couldn’t deal with the loss of their powers. The villains were fine—they ran off to run governments, work on Wall Street, they fit right in. But Cellular Man…” I swallowed. I could still see the blood.

Every day, tried to wash it away, but it wouldn’t go. Out, damned spot, out. It was everywhere, staining my clothes, my sheets. But taking that horror and putting it into words was beyond me. “He tried to shapeshift… without powers,” I said, my voice shaking. “He cut off… pieces of himself, stapled or stitched them onto other body parts. It was…” I couldn’t finish. My throat was closing up. Toby got up, brought me a glass of water, and I choked it down. I found his hand on my shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” I said, a little more fiercely than I’d intended. A couple ex-sidekicks winced. I must have looked a mess; eyes streaming, hair akimbo. But I needed to finish the story. All our lives had been cut short—I deserved that much. “I need this.”

“Okay.” He sat down.

“When the police came… the new police, not the kind we used to know, not the bumbling extras who would eat donuts and wait for us to show up… when the cops came, they threw me in a squad car. They were going to pin it on me. I was stupid enough to touch the knives, I tried to pull them out. They had fingerprints…” I focused on breathing, zoned in on a small hole in the concrete. A perforation. “They were convinced I did it. I was done for. And then he came.”

“The Storyteller,” said Toby.

I nodded. “Yes. With his cashmere sweater, and his pipe, and his stupid fucking…” They all blanched. “His… big glasses.” I wasn’t scared of him, not like they were. They all thought he was God, that he could kill any of us at any time, for speaking ill of him. I knew better.

If he’d wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t waste so much time torturing us.

“He walked into the police station. He wrote something on a piece of paper… Taped it to my cell. No one seemed to notice him. And the same officer who’d slammed my nose into the floor, broke it and wouldn’t give me a phone call, that officer opened the cell door. Smiled. Offered me… offered me coffee.” I fingered the crook in my nose where the splint had settled the bone. It still crunched, sometimes, when I poked it. “They said they were sorry, so sorry for the mix-up. That night they arrested some random guy, charged him with Cellular’s murder. Last I heard, he was doing fifty to life.”

Silence, around the ring of pale and frightened faces.

“I came back here. Back to the cul-de-sac, where all of us seem to end up—no matter what jobs we land, no matter who we once were. Villains, heroes, sidekicks, fucking henchmen… We all end up here.” I found I could breathe once more. Some great and awful weight was lifting from my joints, my spine, fleeing my guts like the sudden absence of a tumor. “Someone else moved into Cellular Man’s house, the week after. Like nothing happened.”

“What was on the piece of paper?” This was Remora Boy. He was sucking on a lollipop: slowly, compulsively. His way, I assumed, of dealing with the lack of his suction powers. I couldn’t judge. We all had our own ways of carrying the cross, the weight of a past world, one that had never existed.

“It had this elaborate, cursive handwriting. Very small, very precise. It said… ‘After the gruesome murder at Olympus Circuit Drive, young Shawna was falsely accused, another victim of our flawed criminal justice system. Luckily, a stop-and-frisk caught the real culprit with the victim’s blood and several murder weapons, that very night! Vindication never tasted so sweet.’”

“Our state doesn’t have stop-and-frisk,” said Toby.

“Exactly.” That tiny hole in the concrete seemed to swallow my world, as I delved into the memory, explored its nooks and crannies. Searching for any missing pieces. “There was more.”

They waited.

“‘The good people of Olympus Circuit welcomed her back with open arms.’” I’d kept the paper, pinned it to my fridge, to prove I wasn’t crazy. Memorized it. “‘Soon enough, the terrible act was forgotten, and life returned to normal. Shawna Mason continued her life as a landscaping designer… an ordinary, everyday hero, making the community more beautiful each day.’ And that’s why I came. Because… because no one remembered him. And that wasn’t right.” I broke up a little, and Remora Boy handed me a tissue box. I took it reluctantly, snorted into a Kleenex.

“Anybody got a trash can?”

“Over there,” said Gamma. I threw a mess of mucus and shame into the bin. Stared at the floor again.

“You say this was months ago,” Toby prompted me, softly. “Why now? If he made us forget, why did you need to share this with us now?”

My hands balled into fists. “Because… because I don’t think that’s the only thing he’s made us forget.”

Toby frowned. “What do you mean?”

There was a knock on the door. We all jumped. I knew who it was; I knew what was about to happen. For all we knew, it might have happened a hundred times—because none of us would remember. Not with our lives rewritten out from under our feet every morning.

“I think he’s Rewritten more than just our pasts,” I said, speaking over the sound. “I think he’s messing with us on purpose. Torturing us, building a Purgatory, for something the heroes did. Or something he thinks they did.”

“Shawna,” said Toby, rising, “maybe we shouldn’t—”

“No! Fuck this!” I rose. Pushed my chair in front of the door. The knocking grew louder; I tried to shut it out, tried to think of anything but that sound, my nails digging blood out of my fists. “We can’t let him do this! We were the good guys, damn it! We don’t deserve this!” Remora Boy was crying. The others had pulled away from me; their faces were sheep’s faces, panicked and wild-eyed.

“We have to fight back,” I said, and the knocking grew louder, and I could feel his influence slithering into the room like a fat slash of red ink through our lives. “He’s going to stop us meeting like this. He’s going to make us forget. But we need to hold on. He can’t rewrite everything! There has to be some hole—some way through his powers!”

Toby stepped forward. First I thought he was going to hit me, stop me from bringing the anger of our new God into this room, into our minds. But he just put a hand on my cheek.

“This has happened before,” he said. He was smiling, the genial expression of peace you might see on a saint. Or a martyr. “You gave us a phrase to repeat. A mantra. This time I remembered it.”

“I…” The hammering was thicker and now I recognized it for what it was: not a fist on wood, but the sound of a typewriter’s keys, old-fashioned and big as the stars, slamming down into us, changing the script. “What was it?”

“No one can break through the ceiling,” he said and then the Sidekicks decided to disband their quaint little meeting, for the good of all. There would be no more awkward confessions tonight. Because the old world was gone, and it was easier to forget it, let it pass. The comrades hugged, they cried, they ate crackers and cheese and slurped stale water from Toby’s kitchen tap. And then they went home, and fell into a deep, nourishing sleep, forgetting all dreams of returning to the old way. After all, their lives were better now: more meaningful, more human. No more silly costumes, no more playing dice with the fate of the earth. Their toys were broken, but they now had a chance to do real good. Lasting good.

In the quiet of Olympus Drive, there remained only the stillness of night, and the ripe possibilities of a slowly approaching dawn.

I woke up screaming. The scary part was, I didn’t know why.

My throat was raw. My hands were scabbed over with fingernail marks.

             I got out of bed, tried to wash the blood off my hands.

             No one can break through the ceiling.

             There was a note on the fridge.

"The Uber Out of Time"

You slam the door on your way out.

Stupid, stupid. If you'd just kept your voice down, just tried to work things out, maybe she wouldn't have accused you of all that. Stupid. Doesn't she know what you're going through? You can't be expected to listen to this shit. It's not your fault--you were coerced! You can't be blamed.

You need some air; you need to get away. Soon the ride-share car rolls up the street, speckled by drizzle. It's a Saab, of all things, but well-kept. You haul on the door handle and throw yourself in.

The driver turns around. He's nondescript. The app says his name is Kameel. "How's it going?"

"Hey." You aren't interested in small-talk. Not right now. Rage burns under your skin, and you feel like punching the back of the passenger seat. You don't.

"So, when do you want to go?"

You stare at him. "Now. I thought that was implied."

"No, no..." He holds up his phone. The app there is unfamiliar. You look down and see the app you have open isn't familiar, either. It sure as hell isn't one you downloaded. "I mean, what year? What point in your life?" He checks his phone. "You are Chuck Wentworth, right? You didn't put in a timeline when you requested me."

You stare at him. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm Chuck." You're not.

The app is asking for a year and a date. Outside, the rain is thickening, fat spots of drizzle sliding cold and viscous down the Saab's window. Some corner of you wants to slug the guy, or laugh. But then the other side, the shrewd self that's been hiding lipstick smudges, kicks in. Maybe you'll humor him. See if there's a scrap of truth in his bullshit.

"How far can I go?" Can't believe this crap.

"That's on you, man. Big surcharge on 2020, though. Surge pricing, y'know?" Oh, ha-ha, very funny. You roll your eyes, and the rain stops coming.

It doesn't just pass--it stops falling completely. In midair. Droplets hang suspended; wind-swept showers wait on the cold breeze, captured like a photograph. A photograph you're inside of. Nearby, a sparrow caught in the wetness dangles over a puddle, the spray of its takeoff surrounding it, a halo of dew under the soggy orange streetlight glow.

The driver fidgets. "What's it gonna be? If you wanna cancel, that's fine, but there's a fee..."

"No, I'm fine, How about...." You swallow, the walls of your belief cracking open. "Same timeline. But... six months from now."

An eyebrow is raised. "You sure? Same timeline?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, bro. You asked." He circles the block, gently easing around frozen cars. When he arrives back in the same spot, there's a blinding flash--the corona of two hundred suns flashing across the sky all at once. A wave of heat and cold in alternating stutters washes over you. You find your fingernails longer, your hair shaggy. Your stomach paunchier. Clearly these six months without her have been stressful. Good thing you didn't have to live through them.

"Well, there you go, man. Home sweet home. Thanks for riding."

"Thanks..." You climb out of the car. It's sunny, now, and beautiful. The early, crisp days of March. You check your phone and see that you were charged $10.56 for your ride, courtesy of Yog, a company you've never heard of.

Well, damn.

You swagger up the sidewalk towards your apartment--free, easy, no weight on your shoulders. Barely comprehending. Yet you're loose now: no more responsibility. You cheated, in more ways than one: you've escaped. Now you can live your life without interruption, without nagging. Thank God. You always wanted to be a bachelor, on the inside, but you hated the loneliness, the stigma. Now you can start over.

When you get inside, your girlfriend is on the couch. She looks due in about three months: puffy, tired, and enormous. Her things litter the walls, crowd your tiny living space. She looks miserable.

"Hey," she says, cradling a bowl of ice cream. "Did you get that second job?"

The Traitor

An excerpt from one of the books I'm working on, called "Plague of Steel."

            My name is Jamie Dhukkan, and I am about to become a terrorist.

            When the first refugees arrived, my husband and I campaigned to deport them. It was ironic: we were both second-gen immigrants, his parents from Kolkata and mine from Sri Lanka, and here we were petitioning to try and reject frightened, scared people from our shores. America is beautiful, yes… but as they say, you must pay the toll to get in, and the toll was far too high for these people, escapees of the first infestations in Ukriaine, in Sierra Leone, in Indonesia. My husband overheard the military discussing the plague; they thought might have been “delivered” to developing nations on purpose. “Developing”… Well, they developed under Silver’s influence. Very quickly. They developed into angry hives of furious, faceless half-machine monsters, their last sliver of humanity allowing them to understand the pain and betrayal of border closures, UN firing squads, the last resorts of a terrified Europe. Can anyone be blamed for trying to run from these things?

            If we had permitted a few more to make landfall, if we’d seen the face of the disease instead of sharpening bayonets and building higher fences, we might’ve managed a cure. We might have had enough time, enough human specimens to work on. Applied EMP bursts worked temporarily for pushing back the infected, but it was like using a sledgehammer against a swarm of gnats—by the time the FDA had approved the manufacture of EMP belts and necklaces, Florida was already neck-deep in nanites, and the first cases had surfaced in New York. We waited too long; we saw only in the short term, planning for today instead of thinking of tomorrow. Now we’ll pay for it.

            My husband has been gone for three weeks.

He was working on Project Kessen—a “breakthrough” he claimed would turn the tide of the plague. Two days ago the Army came and confiscated all his work, right down to the last sample. I was furious; I demanded they tell me where he was, what had happened. They served me a death certificate on the spot, like stone-faced magicians producing a rabbit. Reach into the black top hat and poof, Annie, your husband is gone. So sorry. An accident at the lab, casualty of the war, these things happen.

They stripped the lab and left me standing in the kitchen, hyperventilating like an idiot. I sucked life from my inhaler, struggled for air as they piled into an armored truck and pulled away. I wish I’d fought them on it, asked more questions, forced my hand… but would it have helped? We all know what happens when you ask too many questions about the nanites. About where they came from. The president has stopped issuing denials—Silver is a federal experiment gone wrong, and everyone knows it. My Farook wouldn’t say so—but I saw the guilt in him. The shame. The terrible knowledge that his adopted country had unleashed something on the world, something that was eating men and women and children alive. Changing them. That kind of guilt can’t be shaken off—you live with it all your life.

I should know; I’m a cellular biologist, like my mother before me. When I was five, she was working on malaria for the Sri Lankan government, trying to neuter infected mosquitoes. Somehow a single insect escaped from the lab—my mother would never say how, but she suspected that someone simply left a door open. One fault in a specimen cage, one door left ajar, and hundreds of people died from a completely preventable disease. The elderly, the weak, and the poor died in droves. Such are the wages of knowledge.

Sorry, I’m rambling. I’m getting bitter in my old age. Just forty, and I’ve lost my husband, my career, my government grants. No golden years for us, no peaceful retirement—it’s not like there’s a Florida or an Arizona for us to retire to, anyway. But I refuse to believe I lost him in some idiotic accident. Farook wasn’t like the other Army hire-outs, the ones who sucked the CDC’s teats and outsourced their work to agencies that didn’t even wash their petri dishes. Farook was smart. He could sense a change in the wind before anyone else—it’s how he survived the budget cuts, the havoc at DARPA when funding for his cellular automata disappeared. He never quit, naturally: he was patient, he was precise, and above all he was committed. He loved the whole concept of nanobots, I took to making fun of him for it. “Don’t make anything that can think,” I would warn him, and pinch his ear. Oh, how he hated that.

Guess the joke’s on me. Because if he didn’t have a hand in making Silver, who did? Some backwoods Iranian engineer? Those madmen in Pyongyang? I don’t think so. These machines are not logical; they do things to human cells that shouldn’t be possible, that defy the laws of physics. They move so quickly and evolve so fast it borders on—I hate to say it—magic. If human hands were behind this thing, I’ll eat my doctorate.

The Army is running out of doctors. Silver cases among the enlisted are through the roof, and of course the nanites can chew through a clean-suit now. They’ll do anything to get at a vulnerable human host. Which makes no sense; the wet, hot environment of human organs should be anathema to machines. We should be inhospitable to them. But the ‘why’ of the disease is no longer important. The plague’s hunger is my ticket into Farook’s Army base.

It’s been a long time since I left med school for epidemiology. I didn’t have the heart for being a medical doctor… Watching people sicken, watching them die. I wasn’t strong enough to watch for that, because I knew for every man or woman I saved, there would always be two more who died of leukemia, or bone marrow cancer. No, that life was not for me. Until now.

               

I found a man who will forge me credentials. He smells strange, like curry gone rotten, and doesn’t speak much. But he’s ex special-forces and he knows what they look for—the personality quirks they check you for. He thinks he can get me into the base, to “treat” their sick. As if anything can stop the machines, once they take root.

                There’s an on-site lab, very secure, hidden below fifty feet of bomb-proof elevator shaft. I have Farook’s codes. I took them, before the army came. I thought he might want them, if… if he ever came back.

                I’m packing now. I’m leaving this tape recorder because, well, once I get in there I can’t guarantee what will happen. If they disappear me, if they wipe me from the records and ship me to Guantanamo or some other blacksite, Chicago maybe, at least someone might find this. At least someone will know why I did what I did, why I turned traitor. It wasn’t for a big agenda, not for fundamentalism or money. It’s just love. I loved that ridiculous, eccentric, occasionally stupid husband of mine, and I am going to get him back or find his body. One way or the other.

                Project Kessel… They think they’re so clever. They think just because I’m a biologist by training, there’s no chance I could have understood his notes. They didn’t even take me in for questioning. But I know what they’re up to.

                They’re trying to tame it. Turn it to their side, or a piece of it, or a colony. And then… what? Weaponize it? This thing has already threatened us as a species. How many more will die when they try to turn it loose, a dog on a very brittle chain? Right now, the machines convert people at random. It’s all arbitrary. Some hosts merely get sick; others warp into monsters with gears for teeth and titanium fingernails. But if we make it angry, threaten it… It’s not stupid. It can respond to stimuli, evolve. If we declare war on this thing, turn nanite on nanite, how long can our species survive?

                I’m going. I don’t know what I’m going to find, but I know this will be the last time I see the house. The photographs in the hall; the shrine near the coat-rack. All of it, I must hold in my memory. When they catch me, and waterboard me, and put battery clamps on my loins, it will be this house I think of. Our peace that we built, here, in spite of the plague. In spite of a lack of children. We made this house our child, and it breathes in and out with the essence of us. The essence of what we were.

                I’m coming, Farook. Wherever you are, please don’t give up.

                It’ll take more than a little plague, to stop me loving you.